Article 1: Marketing Research: Individual Words
We all know that phrases like "Who else wants to know" in a
headline can improve our sales. Have you ever thought
about the individual words and their impact on your
profitability?
I recently performed a statistical analysis on several
thousand ads while looking at individual words and
profitability.
The first task was to determine the profitability of each
ad being analyzed. This was done using the age-old
mailorder marketing method. Basically, if you see an
advertisement month after month and year after year, it is
probably profitable. If you see an ad only once or twice
and then it changes or disappears completely, the
advertisement was probably not very profitable.
The next task was to simply look for the occurence of a
list of words in each ad while noting whether the ad was
profitable or not. The results were tallied and lots of
words were removed from the list because there simply
wasn't sufficient data to come up with a statistically
significant result.
I won't bore you with the rest of the details. Here is a
list of some of the words found much more often in
profitable ads than in ads that didn't produce a profit:
accessories, an, best, blue, buy, by, causes, cheap,
discount, discover, easily, fast, find, guaranteed, has,
improve, increase, lower, more, nationwide, near, need,
of, on, one, order, payments, powered, pricing, rates,
reduce, stop, superb, the, view, what, with
Here is a list of the words found much more often in ads
that were NOT profitable:
affordable, after, and, as, at, before, better, help,
here, how, else, excellent, experience, for, led, listings,
loan, method, money, mortgage, naturally, now, options,
photos, search, secret, secrets, sell, step, to, try,
unlimited, us, who, you, your
Now keep in mind that correlation can not prove causality.
This research isn't saying that all ads that use the word
"excellent" are doomed to being unprofitable. However, it
is saying that a statistically significant percentage of
ads that use the word "cheap" are profitable and a majority
of those that use the word "affordable" are not profitable.
If your ad copy currently uses the word "affordable" (a
word from the "bad" list above) and you change that word
to "cheap" (a word from the "good" list above), will your
profitability increase? There are no guarantees. There
are an unlimited number of factors that could impact that
result. Not ALL ads that use the word "cheap" were
profitable. Not ALL ads that use the word "affordable"
were unprofitable. However, the use of the word "cheap"
instead of "affordable" is more likely to improve your
profitability.
You still need to split test to find out the answer in any
particular situation. But, why not start out with the most
likely words to be profitable in ad copy generally
speaking?
Take a look at your current ad copy and see if you can find
any of the words in the "bad" list that have good
replacements in the "good" list. Run a split test and see
if your profitability increases. What can it hurt to put
some math on your side?
James D. Brausch is the creator of QuitThatJob.com,
a step-by-step coaching membership site to help you build
an Internet business with residual income that will help
you QUit That Job! QuitThatJob.com is based on James'
actual method of building his own business and real
research like you found in this article.Quit that Job
Article 2: Traffic Generation at Low Cost
So, you have a killer website that you are just certain will
become the next Yahoo or Google if only you could get
people to actually visit your site. The only problem is
that you don't have the money to spend on pay-per-click
programs or software for e-mailing campaigns. As things
stand, your site doesn't even rank in the first ten pages
of search results and it is starting to look like your great
idea may die a miserable and lonely death. Before you
throw in the towel, here are some free ways to increase
traffic flow to your site:
Being ranked first in the search engines does not cost a
dime, but it does cost effort. If you are going to get to
the first page of the search results, you need to do your
homework. The first thing to do is to study your
competition. The people who rank first already have a
winning formula. You just need to figure it out. You need
to study their keyword density formula, the sites they are
linking to, and meta tag usage. You will need to alter one
variable at a time and test the results. Finding the right
keyword density formula should probably be your first
priority. Once you find one that works, start generating
a lot of useful content using this formula. Don't worry
about getting it perfect, because no one does. Just find
one that boosts your rankings and then generate the content.
Aside from a having a lot of keyword rich content using the
right formula, the second best way to boost rankings is to
link with other popular sites. The search engines figure
that if you are linked with other popular sites, then your
site must be pretty important. The key is to develop a site
with content that is both relevant and useful to other
webmasters. This is why you need to develop your keyword
density formula first and then generate content based upon
it. This makes it a lot easier to convince webmasters to
link with your site. The more links you establish with
popular site, the higher you will climb in the rankings.
Once you have a site filled with great content, start
sending out personal e-mails to webmasters asking to link
with their site. Some sites will even allow you to manually
link with them without first obtaining permission. They
are probably not the greatest links, but it is a start!
Another great way to generate traffic flow without spending
is using Yahoo classifieds. Yahoo has millions of visitors
from all over the world every day, and your ad is sure to
get noticed. You are allowed to post up to 10 ads at a time
absolutely free of charge. The trick is to write compelling,
attention-grabbing copy. You will achieve success if you are
willing to experiment. While search engine rankings are more
useful than online classifieds, these ads especially the
popular Yahoo classifieds can provide a great start totally
free!
All in all, search engines hold the key to traffic flow.
Since almost 90% of surfers use search engines to help them
find what they are seeking, as a website owner you have to
win them over in order to achieve online success. Analyze
your competitors' sites closely, arrive at an optimal
keyword density formula, and then create lots of useful,
relevant and compelling content. Soon you will be linking to
other sites and climbing on the search engine rankings!
Desmond Mantor is the Director of Sales for
Have Traffic.
Discover how you can purchase visitors at a low flat-rate
who are qualified prior to clicking on your link.
